Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.
Trump’s attempt to discredit a former White House insider with a new tell-all book has failed spectacularly and made Trump look stupid.
Cliff Sims has written the book Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House.
Sims’ official title was “special assistant to the president” and “director of White House message strategy.”
Upset at the book’s reportedly unflattering portrayal of his historically unpopular presidency, Trump complained, “A low level staffer that I hardly knew named Cliff Sims wrote yet another boring book based on made up stories and fiction.”
Sims responded with a series of pictures from his White House tenure. One shows him walking shoulder to shoulder with Trump along the famous West Wing Colonnade, just a few feet away fom the Oval Office. Another snapshot shows the author at the Resolute Desk across from Trump.
“Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House” is out today, written by the most famous “gofer” in the world! Enjoy! https://t.co/Eovn8jMVhk pic.twitter.com/V013bIe0r2
— Cliff Sims (@Cliff_Sims) January 29, 2019
The last picture does a great job of showing up Trump, with his signature below a note that reads “Cliff Great Job! Thanks.”
Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the author is a tried-and-true tactic. He famously described top campaign official George Papadopoulos as merely a “coffee boy” despite his work at the campaign’s highest level. Like Sims, Trump called him “low-level.”
The book has so incensed the White House that they are threating to sue over the content. “The Trump campaign is preparing to file suit against Cliff Sims for violating our NDA,” wrote Trump’s re-election campaign COO Michael Glassner.
Trump threatened to sue author Michael Wolff for his book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, but he never did and the book went on to become a major sales success.
There are several embarrassing stories in the book from Sims, a Trump supporter, that may explain Trump’s hostility to its publication.
The book claims that Trump created an “enemies list” that included members of his own administration he thinks are conspiring against him. According to Sims, he wrote the list with Trump and he “proceeded to name White House staffer after White House staffer.”
Simes also wrote that Trump has a bizarre obsession with the chyrons from cable news shows, and that he has his staff assemble “screenshots of all the chyrons” to be delivered to him before his speeches.
Sims describes Trump as completely enraptured by television. He “consumed TV like the late Roger Ebert must have watched movies,” Sims writes.
And he wrote that Trump is so paranoid he tried to essentially bribe a reporter into revealing who in his inner circle had been leaking information about him.
Sims overall conclusion about Trump is unflattering as well. He notes that in Trump’s eyes, “we were all disposable,” and that he showed little loyalty to anyone.
The attack from Trump has raised the book’s profile, and instead of it fading into obscurity after launch, it is likely to get a sales boost from his anger. Trump can’t resist charging a red flag in front of him, even if he ends up hitting himself in the head.
Published with permission of The American Independent.
